


Penance

by Muriel_Perun



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drinking, Implied Masochism, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, PWP, Past Violence, Sex, description of scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 16:10:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16836043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muriel_Perun/pseuds/Muriel_Perun
Summary: After a success at trial, Matt and Foggy get drunk together and and fall back into each other's arms, but each wants something that the other cannot give.





	Penance

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to CatalenaMara for the beta!

Tilting her head against the back of the sofa, Karen tossed down the rest of the whiskey in her glass.

“Well, boys,” she said, rising, “we crushed it today in court. But it’s time for me to get home.”

“No, don’t go,” Foggy protested expansively, “the night is yet young. It’s only—”

Matt reached up his sleeve to feel his watch. “It’s only three,” he announced, laughing. “It’s early. Stay!”

“Nope, I already called the Uber. After all the late nights on this case, I’ve got to get some sleep.” Rising, she slipped on her jacket and walked toward the door. “I’ll see you Monday. And don’t expect me to be early.” At the door she turned and looked back. “What about you, Foggy? Are you going home?”

“Nah,” he said, “I’ll probably just crash here. My head is spinning.” From which his friends understood that, after months of fighting, things were finally over with Marci, and Foggy really didn’t want to go home.

Karen laughed, pretending not to understand the dark subtext. “See what happens when you lose the drinking game?”

“I’ll have you know I lost on purpose,” Foggy shot back. “This celebration bourbon is the smoothest thing.” He picked up the bottle from the floor and contemplated it, a look of admiration on his face. “It’s as smooth as... as...”

“As Foggy’s cheeks,” Matt said, patting his face, making Foggy blush and Karen snicker.

“Can’t say the same about you,” Foggy retorted, swiping one finger audibly down Matt’s sandpaper jaw.

Matt inclined his head towards the street and pointed at Karen. “Your Uber’s here.”

“Oh, shit! I already have a bad rating. Thanks for the drinks!” And she was gone, rattling down the stairs.

For a moment they both fell silent. “Did she...?” Foggy asked vaguely, gesturing towards the window.

“Yeah, she’s on her way,” Matt said.

“Such a convenient talent,” Foggy remarked brightly, “hearing one car door slam out of all the car doors in this city.”

“Not so convenient sometimes,” Matt remarked sharply.

Even before the alcohol, Matt had been in a mood tonight, his celebratory spirit laid like a veneer over something darker. 

“I loved it today when the judge told us to approach the bench so she could reprimand us, and you walked up and bumped right into it,” Foggy said, refusing to surrender his joviality. With Karen, they had already gone over the high points of their favorable judgment, like a list of greatest hits. “Nice way to get the jury’s sympathy.”

Matt shrugged, refusing to be drawn back into good cheer. In any case, he would never respond to a compliment. “Hey, Fog, you can take the bed. I’ll change the sheets.” He stood and walked towards the bedroom. Foggy rose unsteadily and trailed after him, carrying the bourbon.

“Don’t bother,” he said. “I don’t mind a little drool on the pillow. I might even add some.” Once in the bedroom, he kicked off his shoes and sat on the bed, lounging with his bottle on the pillows piled against the brick wall. “What do you say, partner? One more drink?”

“Why not?” Matt stepped up lightly and sat beside him. Foggy held out the bottle. Matt shook his head and showed that he was holding a bottle of scotch.

“Seriously?” Foggy asked with false surprise, still hoping to drag Matt back into light banter. “You’ve been drinking that rotgut all night? You have no idea what you’re missing. This bourbon—”

“It’s not rotgut, it’s good,” Matt said, laughing softly. “Here, taste it. I bet you’ll like it this time.”

“Must I?” Foggy asked, in his best long-suffering tone. This was a familiar game they played, the whiskey one-upmanship.

But as Foggy held his hand out for the bottle, Matt slid in close and cupped Foggy’s face in one hand. As Foggy’s breath caught in his throat, Matt kissed him.

Foggy’s brain froze, but his body went into high gear. It wasn’t the first time one of their binges had ended like this, but it had been so long, so damn long. God, Matt tasted good, smelled good. He tasted of scotch, yeah, backed by the faint iron taste of blood, because someone had split Matt’s lip again, busted it good, so that it had swelled and scabbed over. That morning, when the judge had asked, he told her that he’d walked into something, and Foggy figured it must have been someone’s big-ass fist because, with his tongue, he could feel that a couple of Matt’s lower front teeth were loose. Foggy kept his tongue away from those, trying to kiss gently, but Matt bore down with his lips, his tongue, his open mouth. Leaning in, Foggy kissed Matt back with all his might. He couldn’t lose this again. He just couldn’t.

When they were roommates in law school, when they were interns together, a lot of nights ended with them kissing or fooling around, or even jerking each other off. But every time Foggy thought they might become a regular thing, something would happen to pull them apart. Elektra took Matt away for a while towards the end of law school and almost drove him off a self-destructive cliff. Later, in the early days of Nelson and Murdock, when Matt became Daredevil, he didn’t hang around with Foggy at night anymore. When Nobu had nearly torn Matt to pieces, and Foggy finally found out Matt was Daredevil, they cut each other off. Foggy still thought sometimes of the day they’d spent together in Matt’s busted-up apartment, with Matt bleeding in front of him from his barely stitched wounds, doubled over in pain, the two of them talking at cross purposes and crying over the friendship that was disintegrating right in front of them. Not that Foggy could resist taking care of him, even then.

And later, during the endless shit-show of Fisk’s return, when Matt seemed determined to keep going back for more punishment until it killed him, Foggy had run to Marci and stayed with her until the whole thing was over and Fisk was back in a cell where he belonged.

Marci had taken a lot of shit at work about Foggy’s failed run for D.A., his resignation from Hogarth, and the renewal of his small-time partnership with Matt and Karen. She called Matt a loser once too often, and she and Foggy finally had the “Big Fight,” where both said exactly what they thought, and Foggy ended up slamming out of the apartment and spending the night in a hotel. Now they were sleeping in separate rooms, glaring at each other when they happened to cross paths, and Foggy was looking for a cheaper place.

Foggy had thought that Matt would never come to him again. Tonight he felt like he was coming home.

“I missed you,” Foggy whispered, and for a moment he thought Matt wasn’t going to answer.

“Yeah. Me too.” It was barely a breath, a thread of sound.

For a long time they kissed—and kept on drinking, spitting little sips of whiskey into each other’s mouths—deep kisses laced with the caramel sweetness of bourbon and the butterscotch tang of good old Macallan’s, Matt’s drink of choice. Foggy wasn’t a scotch man himself, but under these circumstances, with Matt warm and willing up against him, with one hand threaded through Matt’s hair, it tasted just fine.

Foggy didn’t want anything to change. Aroused as he was, he would have been content to go on like this until the liquor put them to sleep in each other’s arms, just like in the old days. But then Matt reached over and unbuttoned Foggy’s shirt to put his hand inside, caressing his chest, touching his nipples. Foggy couldn’t help whimpering with need, though he tried, too late, to suppress it. Matt had always teased him about this: Matt’s nipples were no more or less sensitive than the rest of his chest, while Foggy’s were as responsive as a woman’s.

“Yeah, that worked,” Matt said, smiling. “See? I still know all your secrets.”

“I’ll have you know it’s a very rare condition. Don’t tell the prosecutors, or they’ll all want a piece of me,” Foggy said seriously, happy to reclaim a bit of their traditional banter.

Foggy broke away to take another mouthful of bourbon, sucking air between his teeth to feel the cold burn and then letting it dribble slowly between Matt’s lips. Matt hissed when it touched the sore place on his lip and redoubled the kiss, reaching up with his mouth for Foggy’s, sucking and licking the liquor from Foggy’s loose lips. Matt knew what he was doing. He always knew how to make Foggy so hard he couldn’t stay still.

“You want me,” Matt whispered, and Foggy laughed.

“Nah, I don’t,” he lied, rutting up against Matt’s leg. “What makes you say that? Can you hear my heartbeat?”

“Yeah, I had to listen to your heartbeat to know that you were lying,” Matt said dryly. “You definitely want me.”

“Smart ass. How can you tell the difference between lying and arousal, huh?” Foggy teased. “Even you can’t do that.”

“Can too.” Matt sounded smug about it—his ability to sound you out, find your truth and turn it inside out and use it.

“Anyway, who wouldn’t want you, you big jerk? I told you the day we met you were gorgeous.”

Their lips came together again, slick and soft with kissing, warm with arousal. “Take your clothes off, Foggy,” Matt murmured. “Strip for me. I want to feel your skin.”

Damn, Matty always knew what to say and how to say it.

Foggy was still wearing the ruins of his business suit, with his shirt half on and his tie draped loosely around his neck. Kneeling over Matt, he yanked them off and let them drop. Then his pants and his socks, and then a slight hesitation before the undershirt and boxers came off because, god knew, Foggy was self-conscious about his pale, smooth chest, soft belly, the desk-sitter’s flab on his hips, but god also knew that Matthew couldn’t actually see him, or could he? How much could Matt “see”? A silhouette? A shape in the dark? “A world on fire,” as he once had said? Or could he see hard and soft, high and low, the complete topography of Foggy’s sorry physique? As if in answer to his question, Matt’s hand went unerringly to the distended pouch of Foggy’s boxers, making him grunt and jerk forward. Matt’s bent smile was a faint tilde in the dark.

“Take them off, Foggy,” he whispered. “Take everything off.” 

“It’s cold in this shithole you call home,” Foggy commented roughly as he pulled the boxers off, feeling the gooseflesh rise on his newly exposed flesh. He grabbed the waistband of Matt’s sweatpants and yanked them down, bundling off his socks and underwear at the same time and throwing everything on the floor, wondering if Matt could hear it drop. He smoothed both hands up Matt’s torso, shoving his shirt up and off, as Matt raised his arms compliantly. Matt was as lean and muscled as ever, with actual abs that you could see and touch. Foggy only started believing in abs after he’d seen Matt’s. He laid his face against Matt’s chest, feeling the lunar landscape of scars and seams and hard contusions, souvenirs of knife fights and smack-downs and beatings dating back to his childhood, but mostly from the last three years.

Foggy knew there was a long, raised diagonal across Matt’s back from a kid at the orphanage who had laid his skin open with a flexible switch, so that Matt, at all of twelve years old, freshly trained by Stick, had bloodied the other kid’s face with his fists, snapped his head back so hard with a kick that he wore a neck brace for a month. Matt, despite his 20 stitches, was the one who got in deep trouble with the sisters that time.

Besides all the ordinary wounds, besides his ruined knuckles, and the new set of contusions on his shoulders and chest from whatever had happened the night before, there was a scary scar on his side that wasn’t quite healed, right next to the scarier one where Nobu had grabbed his ribs with a sharpened hook and dragged him around. Foggy remembered seeing that wound gape and bleed, remembered how his hands shook when he had to call Claire to fix the damage. How that hook had missed killing Matt was some kind of miracle. Matt had reopened those stitches so many times in the same week that the scar had twisted and spread into a shiny crimson patch, until it was restitched one final time.

His face bore the marks of a street fighter, white traces and lines faint against the olive skin of his brow and jaw, a deep crescent marring one cheekbone. And when Midland Circle had fallen, it left damage everywhere. Foggy could never think of that time without cringing, those long, empty weeks when he thought Matt was gone, imagined his crushed body lying under tons of rubble, interred under the city he loved with Elektra, his nemesis, love of his life.

And during those weeks, in the middle of the night, whenever Foggy woke up in a cold-sweat panic, the agony of that loss made him wish that he, not Elektra, had died under the building, crushed in Matt’s arms.

Foggy kissed a newly healed scar just below Matt’s collarbone, stitched up by Maggie so that it was still lumpy as a caterpillar all these weeks later. Matt murmured something, but Foggy didn’t catch it. “What?”

“You’re freezing, man.”

“No shit, Sherlock. It’s an icebox in here.”

As Matt flicked the covers over them, Foggy settled on his body and rutted up against him, holding their dicks together. Matt moved in response. “Come on, Foggy,” he said urgently.

“Give me a chance,” Foggy teased. “I want to do this slowly. I want—”

Matt’s eyes were closed, but his eyelids fluttered and he was breathing audibly through his open mouth. “Not slowly,” he rasped. “Not like this.”

_Oh, god. He’s in one of those moods._

“Right now. Just do it. Just push into me. Just take—” It wasn’t Matt’s voice, it was Daredevil’s, the rasp he used when he wore the mask. Foggy’s heart started beating faster.

“What happened last night, Matty?” Foggy asked quietly. “Your chest is covered with welts. Did someone get the drop on you? You took a beating.”

“You should have seen the other guys,” Matt said, still breathing hard. His standard line to avoid the truth. 

“Guys?”

“Two of them. With a lead pipe.”

“Oh, shit, man.” Foggy recoiled. “Did you get it away from them?”

“I knocked it out of the guy’s hand, and when I went back to find it, it was gone. So some other guy can beat me over the head with it another night.” Matt’s mouth twisted into a distorted grin. He seemed to think it was funny. Foggy didn’t.

“What were they up to?”

“Nothing weird. Just a robbery at a corner store.”

“One of them got a punch in.” Foggy licked the swollen spot on Matt’s lip. “Or was this from the pipe?”

“Yeah. No big deal.”

“Jesus, Matt.” With gentle touches of his lips, Foggy started a slow and systematic inventory of the new welts on Matt’s chest and shoulders.

“What are you doing, Foggy?”

“Making you feel good, dummy. Kissing the owies to make them all better.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Oh, I forgot,” Foggy said, nuzzling his face over Matt’s scarred chest, nipping at his shoulders and throat with his lips and teeth, “you don’t deserve to feel good. You’re just supposed to suffer, because it makes god happy. Martyrdom, right?”

Foggy heard Matt scoff softly in the dark. “Not so dramatic. Penance.”

“So is that what it means that you’re asking me to fuck you?” Submission didn’t come easily to Matt. There had to be a reason he wanted Foggy to do this.

Without warning, Matt gripped Foggy’s arms. It felt like twin bench vices tightening on his biceps. “I want you,” Matt said. “Why does it have to mean something? I’m drunk, and I want you,” he repeated, his smile going a little goofy. “Just fuck me, Foggy.” Matt spoke in his own husky whisper, not the devil’s, and the words slammed straight into Foggy’s chest, making him shaky with desire.

“Come on, Matt,” Foggy said desperately, giving him one more chance to walk it back, “we don’t have to do that. It’s late, we can just—”

“Do it, Foggy,” Matt whispered. “Don’t you want to?”

“Yeah,” Foggy said, sighing, though he had surrendered long before. “Okay, yeah. Goddamn it, Matt, you know I want to.” With his lips against Matt’s cheek Foggy felt him smile that twisted, bitter smile, the self-deprecating one he smiled when he’d gotten his way and he couldn’t help but be pleased with himself, and ashamed.

Did Matt really want this, or was he using Foggy because he needed to atone for something? Maybe he’d hit a guy too hard, or too many times, maybe he’d had a bad thought, or remembered something from the past that made him feel guilty. Maybe he’d sinned in thought, word, or deed. Maybe that anchor of guilt he dragged around with him had suddenly gotten too heavy. Maybe he needed Foggy to share the load.

“You know I’ve never done this,” Foggy said uneasily. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Foggy was drunk, but not that drunk. He could stop this. But he was already doomed, spiraling down that familiar road to perdition. Foggy never could deny Matt anything, not for long. The devil had got ahold of him again and stuck him in the fire till he burned. He knew he was going to do everything Matt wanted. But he was going to do it in his own way.

“It’ll be okay,” Matt said quietly, though there was a strain in his voice that Foggy didn’t want to think too much about. “There’s lube in the drawer. C’mon, Fog,” Matt coaxed, and Foggy realized just how much he must want this. Matt never asked for anything more than once. People had always bailed on him, so now Matt pushed them away before they had a chance to disappoint him. Foggy swallowed the rest of his protests. _Don’t whine, don’t deny him. He needs this. You need it._

The lube was in the drawer, two or three different kinds, along with an assortment of condoms. Foggy knew Matt had slept with more women than Foggy had even met, but it stung to see the evidence. He hid his hurt in a smart-ass remark.

“Hmm, strawberry lube? Is that what you’re into now? What kind of condom goes with strawberry? Do you have French vanilla? Or maybe they come in Macallan’s flavor.”

Matt laughed softly. “Not that strawberry stuff, it’s disgusting. Someone brought it over.”

“I can only imagine,” Foggy said, stung again, no matter that he’d been sleeping with Marci every night for a year. “So, it’s the Astroglide unscented, then. What kind of condom?”

“No condom.”

“What? Come on, Matt, you—”

“No condom,” Matt repeated firmly, pulling Foggy down on top of him and grabbing his ass. “I need to feel _you_ , Foggy, not the rubber.” That was more than enough to get Foggy going.

He lubed up a couple of fingers and pushed them in, realizing as he did so that it was going to take a lot more force than he had expected. The thought of fucking Matt like this, even finger-fucking him, got Foggy so hot he surprised himself. He’d thought of doing this before, he couldn’t deny it, but it had been a fantasy. He’d never thought that Matt would want...

“Do it now, Foggy. Don’t be a tease.” Matt’s eyes were closed, his muscles tense and knotted, as if awaiting a blow, and his grip on Foggy’s shoulders was almost unbearably painful.

Was it supposed to be this tight? Could he really shove in there without causing pain, or even injury? Against Foggy’s thigh, Matt’s cock was only half hard. This didn’t feel right.

Breaking Matt’s grip, Foggy moved down Matt’s body and straddled his legs, then bent and licked up the length of his cock. The strangled sound of need that came from Matt’s throat heightened the anxiety in Foggy’s gut. He kissed Matt’s cock and nibbled at it with his lips.

“Foggy,” Matt cried violently, “I want you in me. Why are you— I want—”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Matty,” Foggy said quietly. “If you want someone to hurt you, go out and find that guy with the lead pipe.”

Foggy had done this before, but not for ages, taking Matt’s dick into his mouth, sucking it hard, then easing off and letting it slip against the back of his throat, while Matt’s breath turned raspy and harsh, until he was keening in the back of his throat, close to sobbing. Foggy knew how to do this, how to make Matt beg, and writhe, and thread his trembling fingers through Foggy’s hair. 

Matt was usually so _still,_ so controlled, always listening. You couldn’t keep anything from Matt, he heard it all, the things you whispered to yourself, the rustle of a regretful tear, the secrets you breathed out from the hidden corners of your mind when you though no one could hear. Matt heard.

Matt heard so much, he thought he should be able to control it all, but he couldn’t. No one could. If there was anything monstrous about Matt it was not his heightened senses, but that huge oceanic guilt he carried, guilt for being unable to fix the world. Any small infraction of his own pitiless code threatened to bring down the wrath of god unless Matt paid the price, a blood price. Daredevil paid for Matt’s sins. For every happy moment, for every mistake, a blow, a scar.

Matt courted the pain, coveted the wounds, and now he wanted to find more punishment in sex. But Foggy wasn’t going to help him do that.

In Foggy’s mouth Matt’s cock was rock-solid, hot against his tongue, and with his fingers he was making Matt groan and open his legs, moving with him, grunting at each thrust. Matt was ready now. Pulling away, Foggy rose to his knees and angled Matt’s legs back, preparing to enter him.

Foggy sank in so easily he knew there was no pain, that Matt’s strangled cry was born of pleasure, not pain. Matt seemed overwhelmed now, more uninhibited than Foggy had ever seen him, murmuring unintelligible words, grabbing at Foggy’s body as if he wanted to touch everywhere at once.

Foggy kissed Matt’s face and hair, hoping he could last long enough, so overwhelmed himself that he almost said it, almost told Matt what was in his heart, what had been there all the years they’d known each other.

“Matt. Matt! Oh, Matty.” _Don’t say it. Don’t let him know how much it means. Don’t burden him with it._ Matt could take a punch, but he couldn’t endure love.

Then Foggy felt it starting, the deep pulsation in Matt’s body, and he wondered if Matt could feel it, even hear it, in his own. For one more long moment they were bound together, bodies and minds striving towards release. Matt breathed out his name as if it were a prayer. Foggy felt out of time, suspended in pleasure, even as the moment faded.

When it was over they were both panting and laughing a little, as if they didn’t know what hit them. They lay side by side, facing each other.

“Jesus, Foggy,” Matt said, touching his face.

“Yeah,” Foggy agreed. “Intense.”

“I thought you didn’t know how to do that.”

“I figured it out.” Foggy wondered if Matt could see his face. He felt sated and proud of himself and confused about where this was going, all at once. “I didn’t want to hurt you, man.”

“You didn’t.” Matt’s expression was blank, and though Foggy had learned over the years to read him, this time he wasn’t sure what was going on in Matt’s mind.

“Did you want me to?” he asked hesitantly.

“No, of course not,” Matt scoffed.

“But, you know, I thought... All that guilt...”

Matt grinned. “That’s what confession is for.” 

“Did you... did you do something wrong last night?” Foggy asked hesitantly. Maybe it wasn’t his business.

“No. Yeah, I guess so. I get angry, you know? The guy with the pipe—I broke his arm. He was howling in pain when the cops came. I was standing where they couldn’t see me. One of them called me an animal.”

Foggy pushed the hair back from Matt’s face and brought their foreheads together. “You have nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing. That guy beat you with a pipe. He could have killed you.”

“It’s nothing, next to what I deserve.” He sounded emotional, on the verge of breaking down.

“Jesus, Matt. That’s crazy talk.” Matt’s scars were not all on his body. Foggy wondered if he would go to church and confess it all tomorrow.

“What you just did for me, I didn’t deserve that.” Matt’s guilty whisper made Foggy’s heart clench in his chest.

“What do any of us deserve?” Foggy asked, shaking him gently. “Come on, Matty. You do so much good in the world.”

There was a silence. “Never enough,” Matt whispered.

Foggy held Matt until he slept. A light spasm passed through his body, and a soft sound, as of an animal in pain, came from deep in his throat.

Matt Murdock, Foggy’s best friend, the self-styled Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. How many of the people who admired or reviled him knew he lived in Hell?

Foggy knew. But he would be there, taking care of Matt, fighting off that sea of guilt, deep enough to drown them both.


End file.
